JaMarcus was caught with the Purple Drank yesterday by police.  For those that aren’t in the know, sizzurp and purple drank are terms for a drug concoction consisting of codeine cough syrup mixed with Cool Aid or Sprite and Jolly Ranchers to sweeten it.  It’s also referred to as “lean” due to your inability to stand up straight afterward.  It’s really popular down south, and originated in the Houston hip hop scene.  It then spread throughout the south and to the rest of the country from there.  It’s EXTREMELY addictive and pretty deadly given the amounts that addicts drink it in.  In fact, the cocktail is blamed in the death of DJ Screw and Pimp C.  Now Lil Wayne has admitted to being addicted, and there was a big Outside the Lines piece on its prevalence in sports. Here’s hoping that JaMarcus can get treatment and kick his addiction so he can get back to stealing millions of dollars from the Raiders and sitting on his fat ass.

“•In 1999, fans jeered Dallas Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin as he lay on the field for 20 minutes, suffering from a neck injury that ended his career.
•That same year, fans threw D batteries at St. Louis Cardinals outfielder J.D. Drew, who held out for a year after the Phillies drafted him and eventually signed with the Cards instead.
•Matthew Scott, the only person in the United States to have received a hand transplant, was asked by the Phillies to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at the team’s home opener in 1999. The pitch, from his transplanted hand, dribbled over the plate. The fans booed.
•Eagles fans famously blasted Santa Claus with a shower of snowballs at halftime of a game as St. Nick circled helplessly around the field before stadium officials rescued him.”

So they jeer a guy with a serious injury, assault a player on the field, boo a handicapped person, and pelted Santa.  Oh, and he forgot to mention the time they slashed a woman’s face for wearing a Cowboys jersey and that they continually murder each other.   Then they brag about these things, like it’s a point of civic pride.  So someone has to ask: Why?  Why do you do these things Philly?  Why are you so angry and violent?  Why can’t you control yourselves in public spaces?  Why is your entire city’s fan-base one giant unruly mob?  Please, someone speak up and try to explain why you can’t behave yourselves like decent human beings?

Sports galvanizes people.  It brings us together.  It gives us hope.  It is a welcome distraction.  It brings us heroes.  It gives you something you can believe in.  And in no instance was this more true than in the case of the post-Katrina Saints.  In the wake of that disaster, the city turned to what was for a long time the only team in town.  A team that, like them, had been through hard times.  A team that they had stood by when times were tough.  And a team that they now needed to stand by them in their time of need.  That city needed something to be proud of.  Something to root for.  Something that it could celebrate.  People that it could look up to.  It needed underdogs-turned-heroes like Drew Brees, an injured castoff of a QB who signed with them for less money than other teams had offered because he felt that he could help the team and the city.  He has done both.  They needed people like Louisiana native Tracy Porter, who had a picture of the Louisiana Superdome shaved into his head the day before his game-clinching interception for a TD.  That was a symbol of New Orleans in its darkest days, a refugee shelter for its own fans, now being used as motivation for brighter days.  For healing.  For closure to a painful past.  For catharsis.

People can downplay the fact that a victory for a sports franchise can do much to heal a ravaged city.  But those people don’t understand what that team means to that town.  Or their stadium to the people who slept in it and now cheer in it.  Or those players to the people who they donate their time and money to.  Doubters don’t understand the need to believe in something bigger than yourself, or the need to be proud of where your from and how far you’ve come.  They don’t understand that when you have so little to feel good about, you cling to what little good you have left.  The Saints were that common good for New Orleans.  They were the one thing that survivors of that tragedy could put their hopes and dreams into, could look at with pride, could feel uplifted by, and finally feel good about themselves because the hope that they had clung to while their city was adrift has now come through for them when they needed it.  Celebrate, New Orleans, like only you know how.  You deserve it.  I have a feeling that this Mardi Gras is going to be the best yet.

The following pictures were taken by me 7 months after Katrina struck New Orleans.

This is a video of Bourbon Street after the Saints won the title:

Favre, after another interception, is seen here contemplating just how much he wants to jerk around his team and the media before the start of next season.

Vikings quarterback Brett Favre called a press conference today to announce his (third) retirement from football.  Favre cried a lot and said that finishing his career on a game in which his 2 interceptions and 1 fumble ended his team’s chance at a title was a fitting way to call it quits.  Immediately after his press conference, Favre called another press conference to cry and un-retire (again), followed by an exclusive interview with Fox News saying, while crying, that the Vikings were at fault for the way things had ended and then threatened to leave the team for the rival Packers if things didn’t immediately get resolved on his terms.  Favre then called another press conference in which he did nothing but sob uncontrollably while making no attempt at saying anything at all.

Cardinals/Saints

Here’s all you need to know about this game:

Not the QB shootout I was hoping for.  The Cardinals couldn’t protect Warner, which kept him from getting the ball in the hands of his talented receivers. Meanwhile, Drew Brees and Reggie Bush put on a pretty good show.

Colts/Ravens

I’m pretty sure the Ravens thought they were playing Hot Potato and not football.  They threw 2 picks, fumbled twice… even Ed Reed fumbled.  “But wait,” you say, “Ed Reed is a safety, how did he fumble?”  Well, Ed Reed picked off Peyton Manning, returned it 38 yards, and then got stripped.  Thus is the creative variety of the Ravens’ turnovers on Saturday.  It’s never fun watching a game in which one of the teams keeps shooting themselves in the foot.

Vikings/Cowboys

The Cowboys have sore vaginas.  They claim that the Vikings were running up the score on them.  The Vikings won 34-3 after a late touchdown.  The previous two weeks, the Cowboys beat the Eagles 24-0 and 34-14 (after the Eagles scored a late touchdown to make the score look less pathetic).  Keith Brooking charged the sidelines at the end of the game and shouted at Vikings’ coach Brad Childress. “I thought it was classless,” Brooking said. “I thought it was B.S. Granted, we get paid to stop them, but…“  Well, there you have it.  You blow out a team twice in a row, including in the playoffs, then get blown out and cry about it.  Then you admit that you didn’t do your job in stopping them and that’s why they beat the shit out of you.  Then you say “but” acknowledging that you’re being a hypocrite and a crybaby while simultaneously trying to justify it.  No, Keith Brooking, they aren’t classless.  They were competing with integrity.  They were playing hard til the end.  That’s what you’re taught to do in every game of every sport since you were in elementary school.  I’ll let the Vikings’ Visanthe Shiancoe, who scored the late TD, have the last word.  “Ok, we apologize.  I’m sorry.  Better?”

Jets/Chargers

This was the only good game of the bunch, though I’m sure several thousand idiots out there are complaining about the low score.  It featured a scoreless tie at the end of the 1st quarter, with both defenses dominating early (though the Jets’ uncreative offensive play-calling is probably to blame for their lack of a first down through their first 3 or 4 possessions).  Then the Chargers took control for most of the game, until the Jets fortunes were turned around starting with two interceptions, including this impossible grab by Darrelle Revis:

After that, the Jets scored two TDs in the 4th on a bootleg pass from Mark “Dirty” Sanchez and a breakaway 53 yard run by Shonn Greene.  The only downside to this game was the three missed field goals by Chargers’ kicker Nate Kaeding, which would have given them at least a tie and at most a win.  But despite that, this was a hard-fought close game from start to finish.  That’s about the least these teams could give us after watching the three previous ass beatings.

29-33, 379 yards, 5 TDs, 0 INT

He had more TDs than incompletions.    One of his incompletions was due to Charles Woodson, possibly the defensive MVP, just barely tipping the ball off course.  His 5 TDs, which tied an NFL playoff record, went to 3 different receivers.  He was so on that, on a play in which he was trying to throw the ball out of the back of the end zone, he got hit while throwing and the resulting weaker pass was under-thrown enough that it was caught by a diving Larry Fitzgerald for a score.  On one play, Warner threaded the needle on a pass to Steve Breaston in which his receiver had about one foot of distance on the defender, and the cornerback still almost knocked the ball away, and yet it landed perfectly in Breston’s hands.  That play, and his entire game, just illustrated why, when Kurt Warner is feeling it, he’s as good as any QB in the history of the game.  I hope next week’s games are half as entertaining as this shootout.

"Vince am hungry. Must feed!"

In assessing the first round NFL playoff matchups, ESPN’s Mark Schlereth named fat man Vince Wilfork the key to the Patriots victory, and presumably the one to blame if they lose.  The Patriots hopes to advance to the next round now lie on his broad, fat shoulders.  He must use his tremendous girth to lift his team up, stopping periodically to rest the weight of their expectations on his epic gut whenever he gets out of breath.  Wilfork has missed the last three games due to his foot breaking beneath his gargantuan heft, but will play in the playoffs now that he is “healthy” (i.e. still life-threateningly fat, but able to play).  “Vince is a great “athlete,” and really does a wonderful job at nose tackle,” said coach Bill Bellichick while making quote signs with his fingers at the mention of the word athlete.  “That job, of course, is to be heavy and wide.”

UPDATE: Pat White is awake and doing fine.